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All members of a Yemeni family were martyred as a Saudi warplane raided their home in al-Raqas neighborhood in central Sana’a.

Witnesses reported the death of a whole family, composed of six members including four children, following an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition targeting a house in the residential neighborhood of al-Raqas.

Meanwhile, Yemeni Health Ministry announced that more than 30 people were martyred and injured as the coalition targeted residential neighborhood.

Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched the devastating campaign against Yemen in March 2015.

According to a report by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project [ACLED], the Saudi-led war has so far claimed the lives of about 56,000 Yemenis.

The war has also taken a heavy toll on the country’s infrastructure, destroying hospitals, schools, and factories. The UN has already said that a record 22.2 million Yemenis are in dire need of food, including 8.4 million threatened by severe hunger. According to the world body, Yemen is suffering from the most severe famine in more than 100 years.

Regardless that people are fasting as the month of Ramadan has not ended yet, at least six civilians, including children, were martyred and dozens of others wounded in multiple airstrikes by a Saudi-led coalition on various neighborhoods of Yemen’s capital, Sana’a.

According to Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah television network, Saudi-led warplanes pounded various parts of the capital on Thursday, killing at least six civilians, four of whom were children from one family, and wounding dozens more.

Medical officials said the death toll could rise due to the intensity of the strikes and the number of those who have been seriously injured. They added that there could be other civilians, dead or wounded, under the rubble.

Most of the strikes targeted residential areas in Sana’a, the officials said.

Warplanes also struck a building of Yemen’s Ministry of Information, al-Masirah added. There were no immediate reports about possible casualties or the extent of the damage caused.

Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating campaign against Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of ex-president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power.

According to a December 2018 report by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project [ACLED], a nonprofit conflict-research organization, the Saudi-led war has claimed the lives of over 60,000 Yemenis since January 2016.

The war has also taken a heavy toll on the country’s infrastructure, destroying hospitals, schools, and factories. The UN said in a report in December 2018 that over 24 million Yemenis were in dire need of humanitarian aid, including 10 million suffering from extreme levels of hunger.

A Sri Lankan police officer stands guard at the St Lucia’s Cathedral during a holly mass held to bless the victims of Easter Sunday attacks in Colombo on May 11, 2019. (Photo by AFP)

Authorities in Sri Lanka have arrested a Saudi-educated preacher over links with the suspected mastermind of bombings last month, throwing a spotlight on the role of Salafi-Wahhabi terrorism in South Asia.

Several bomb attacks hit churches and luxury hotels in the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo and two other cities on April 21, killing at least 253 people.

Sri Lankan police found the Nations Thawahid Jaman (NTJ) of having plotted the terrorist act and the group’s founder, Zahran Hashim, of having masterminded the blasts. Hashim blew himself up at a hotel in Colombo on the day of the carnage.

On Saturday, police announced the apprehension of Mohamed Aliyar, who is the 60-year-old founder of a religious center in Zahran’s hometown of Kattankudy on Sri Lanka’s eastern shores.

“Information has been revealed that the suspect arrested had a close relationship with … Zahran and had been operating financial transactions,” the statement said.

Police said Aliyar was “involved” with training in the southern town of Hambantota for the group of bombers who attacked hotels and churches on Easter.

Reports said Aliyar founded the center in Kattankudy in 1990, a year after he graduated from the Imam Muhammad ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh.

The education reportedly marked a key moment in the spread of Salafi and Wahhabi doctrine in Kattankudy and the center was partly funded by Saudi and Kuwaiti donors, according to a plaque outside.

Residents also said Hashim frequented the center and was a troublemaker, who they had warned authorities about his extremist views.

Reuters cited two Muslim community sources in Kattankudy as saying that Hashim’s hardline views were partly shaped by ultra-conservative Salafi-Wahhabi texts that he picked up at the center’s library around 2 or 3 years ago.

“I used to always run into him at the center, reading Saudi journals and literature,” said one of the sources.

During that time, Hashim would rebuke the practice of asking God for help, for instance, claiming that such pleas were an affront to pure Islam.

“That kind of teaching was not in Sri Lanka in 2016, unless you read it in Salafi literature,” the source added, requesting anonymity to avoid repercussions in Kattankudy.

Salafism is closely linked to Wahhabism which has its roots in Saudi Arabia and is backed by its rulers. The radical ideology has been subject to harsh criticism.

Ethnic divide deepens in Sri Lanka

In the aftermath of the deadly blasts in Sri Lanka, Muslim groups say they have received dozens of complaints from across the island country about people from the community being harassed at workplaces, including government offices, hospitals and in public transport.

Muslim community leaders say they had repeatedly warned the authorities about Zahran for years.

“The government knew about the bombings and yet they didn’t take any action. But once it happened, they are targeting us innocent people. This is not fair,” said Milhan, a resident in the northwestern town of Puttalam.

Additionally, a ban on facial veils and house-to-house searches by security forces in Muslim-majority neighborhoods across the country have added to the distrust.

Many Pakistani refugees said they fled the city of Negombo after threats of revenge from locals.

“The suspicion towards them (Muslims) can grow and there can be localized attacks,” said Jehan Perera of non-partisan advocacy group, the National Peace Council. “That would be the danger.”

The Sri Lankan government said it was closely monitoring the situation to curb radicalization but conceded that communal tensions were a big concern.

Muslims make up nearly 10 percent of Sri Lanka’s population of 22 million, which is predominantly Buddhist.

The Saudi regime forces suddenly blockaded houses in the town of Sanabes, located in the Tarout Island in Qatif eastern province.

During the fasting month of Ramadan, the Saudi forces stationed armored vehicles around the area and started shooting at houses south of the town. Initial reports suggest casualties as a result of the attack.

Hezbollah Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem stressed that the Saudi royals have become mere tools funding and implementing the Israeli project in the region, adding that they reject to be accused of committing crimes.

Sheikh Qassem pointed out that Washington is exerting pressures on Hezbollah, Iran and the entire axis of resistance as well as some countries which oppose the US policies, like Venezuela, stressing,”we can confront and overcome them.”

Domestically, Sheikh Qassem emphasized that the state budget being prepared by the Lebanese government must be accompanied with measures taken to fight corruption, adding that the economic crisis will not be ended without such a comprehensive policy.

Sheikh Naim Qassim, the deputy secretary general of Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement, speaks at a ceremony in the southern Lebanese town of Kfar Fila on April 28, 2019. (Photo via Twitter)

The deputy secretary general of Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement has described Saudi Arabia as the root cause of instability in the Middle East, stating that the incumbent regime in Riyadh is sponsoring fiendish US and Israeli crimes in the region.

“Saudi officials are paying for American-Zionist crimes from the pockets of poor and impoverished people among other walks of society in the kingdom. Saudi rulers have turned the country into the kingdom of evil. Saudi money rests behind all crises and problems in the region, besides the agents that are on the American-Israeli side,” Arabic-language al-Ahed news website quoted Sheikh Naim Qassim as saying at a ceremony in the southern Lebanese town of Kfar Fila on Sunday evening.

Qassim added that the ruling Saudi family is a sheer example of an oppressive and dictatorial regime, which practices all kinds of pressure and injustice under American orders to legitimize Arabs’ normalization of diplomatic relations with the Israeli regime, the so-called deal of the century that deprives Palestinians of their motherland and their future, in addition to aggression and occupation.

“Saudi Arabia committed a massacre by executing a number of its citizens without a fair trial and through false confessions. The individuals were charged only because of expressing their views and speaking truth. This is only part of the crimes the Al Saud regime, which has also killed (Shia cleric) Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr and (renowned journalist) Jamal Khashoggi, and destroyed life in Yemen for more than four years without being penalized,” the senior Hezbollah official pointed out.

“The Al Saud is the one who destroyed Syria, introduced (the radical ideology of) Wahhabism, dispatched al-Qaeda, Nusra and their terrorist allies to Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East region, and provoked sectarian strife. They are the ones who are sabotaging Libya, Sudan and Algeria. This regime is preventing stability in the region,” Qassim commented.

Amid international silence and in a world that praises the slaughterer and never cries the victim, the Wahhabi Saudi rulers blatantly executed 37 Saudi youth for being opponents.

Giving empty pretexts and neglecting any talk of human rights, the Saudi interior ministry announced Tuesday the execution of 37 Saudi men.

“The death penalty was implemented… on a number of culprits for adopting extremist “terrorist” ideologies and forming “terrorist” cells to corrupt and disrupt security as well as spread chaos and provoke sectarian strife,” the state news agency said in a tweet.

Al-Ahed learned that all the executed men were opponents of Al-Saud rule.